Surviving the Holidays During a Recession: Entertaining on the Cheap

Every family is different, but most families are looking at ways to cut costs during the current recession. Here are some tips to help you entertain, decorate and travel for the holidays on a budget.

Entertaining: Use discount groceries. When preparing a large family meal for the holidays, remember to shop for the canned and packaged ingredients well in advance. Make an expedition to the local discount grocery stores - don't just shop at the last minute. Foods in cans and jars, frozen foods, wine, and cheese are all easy to obtain at recession-friendly prices if you plan ahead.

Entertaining: Make potluck plans. Plus, you don't necessarily have to shoulder the cost all yourself. If you're hosting and you're not feeling flush, let people know in advance that it would be kind of them to bring in side dishes - the potluck style of planning also saves work, and allows for a wide range of tastes at the dinner table.

Decorating: DIY. Now, you could buy decorations for the holidays at the dollar store - but you already know how to do that. It's highly recommended if you're short on time. And yet there are better solutions, especially for the creative-minded. Our society has a lot of resources, even in a recession, and many of them are going to waste. Recycle rubbish into a new look. If you're not sure how, I've made directions for a couple of Christmas ornaments kids can do in another of my articles, and there are more resources linked from websites like this one.

Travel: Consider the time/money equation. In any family, some people will have a tight work schedule and others will have a more variable schedule, or be retired. When everybody's making plans, consider unorthodox solutions. Who's visiting whom? It's traditional for adult children to visit their parents, but in some cases, seniors might be able to make cheaper travel plans, with senior discounts and with bus or train journeys that could be too time-consuming for an overworked young adult. Don't rule out possibilities until you've looked into them!

Think also about the number of people who have to travel, and where they have to travel from. Maybe the uncle who lives exactly between one side of the family and the other isn't used to hosting, but perhaps he could be talked into it to save on gas costs for everyone.

Travel: Carpool. For the adventurous, craigslist.org has a rideshare section - allowing you to network with other travelers going in your same direction. If you're making a journey by car, consider taking on another passenger to split the gas cost, or traveling as a passenger yourself. It's not for anyone in a hurry, and you must be able to make good, cautious judgments about people, but if taking a relaxed journey over to the next state sounds better to you than burning an expensive load of gas all by yourself, it's highly recommended as a remedy for recession stress.

Happy holidays, and remember - a little ingenuity will mean you almost never have to pay full price.